SYRIZA: Mitsotakis repeated measures from 2022 on hooligan violence

The main opposition on Wednesday accused Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of repeating measures “he had already announced in February 2022” to tackle the violence perpetrated by hooligans in Greece.

Following a meeting with UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin earlier in the day, Mitsotakis said that the associations of organized team supporters will close and only one official association will remain open for each team and operate at each soccer club’s headquarters. The announcement came days after a 29-year-old AEK fan was killed by hooligans in clashes before a match between AEK Athens and Dinamo Zagreb in Greece.

“His stance exacerbates society’s sense of insecurity,” the main opposition said in a statement and criticized him for “keeping and supporting” Citizen Protection Minister Giannis Oikonomou, after police failed to stop the convoy of Croat hooligans from entering the country, despite numerous warnings from other countries.

Syriza said that Mitsotakis called the police’s “unprecedented fiasco ‘operational failures’, underestimating the fact that 200 neo-Nazi hooligans from Croatia entered Greece and crossed half the country undisturbed until they reached Athens, with the tragic conclusion being a young man’s murder.”